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- Research funds- university skimming some money off the top- even a small portion of this going to libraries can help

OUTREACH

Question- to which new groups should UC libraries be reaching out & to what end?

They felt this was extremely different by UC library & not easy to answer.

Subject librarians- at what point do the liaison activities end & the outreach librarian picks up?

Start a listserv to get each other involved on this topic.

Good targets for outreach: students that work in the libraries, library staff- involving them more & drawing on their expertise

All the outreach efforts that are done are very important & bring good attention to the libraries- help people to understand what libraries do & what they can offer

INSTRUCTION

Where do we see instr. services headed in the future & what skill sets are needed by librarians?

Strong foundation in pedagogical theories & knowledge of the resources

strong knowledge of reference resources

Some competing pressures: need to make instruction scalable, how can we also make instruction more integrated? Where do we get the skill sets to produce things like online tutorials & mobile apps?

Need to be more prof dev opps to help keep up with the technological expectations of the students & keep the skill set strong.

Generally feel did not receive a good foundation in learning instruction in library school

USER SERVICES

Are user expectations increasing? Given the shrinking budget situation

Users want to communicate via email, chat, virtual reference, all hours/times of the day. Want their answers immediately. Want more access from home & more convenience in terms of research assistance.

Users also have an expectation of receiving specialized consultations w/ librarians. Especially grad students- how do we provide those services if there aren't enough subject specialists or generalists?

How do we address these needs/improve our skills? Being flexible as much as possible, learning innovative approaches, the CDL cataloging materials online- having access to this is helpful.

Merging the desk with information & reference/research assistance. A shared service desk.

At UCSC- completing a renovation- there will be a shared service desk for circ/reference services. Working to set standards for patron expectations, how the work will be shared & referred, how do we schedule/train all people that will work at the desk?

Binding & preservation. Given the new next gen climate, how do you know what to bind? How do we plan for that?

Subject specialists systemwide, rather than on each campus

Summing up our role- we need to be promoting open access publishing, shared collections, e-books to faculty, admins, publishers. But we also need to determine how to make it work so that they don't lose out, given the changes & budget problems libraries are facing.

TECHNICAL SERVICES

The skills a cataloger will need in the future....what qualities.

flexibility, project management skills

Skill set- moving from traditional cataloging to metadata cataloging

Use the current expertise to help build efficiency standards for best practices

Transferrable skills that we current have. Collaborating catalogers/curators/subject specialists

TECH & DIGITAL INITIATIVES

the needs in the future to have more digital curation skills to help facilitate digital archiving

Gene Lucas is the Executive Vice Chancellor, UCSB and SLASIAC chair. SLASIAC is the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee; read more about them here.

The task force was charged by the Provost of the University:

Greater systemwide or regional consolidation of library services and systems

Systemwide strategies for developing and managing both print and digital collections

Greater reliance on open-access materials

Reduced expenditure on high-priced serial publications

Overall use of library space

Task force members were administrators, faculty members, and ULs from throughout the UC system, plus the program officer from the Mellon Foundation and the Director of Libraries from MIT.

Context of the problems: anticipated budget reductions, increasing costs (esp. journals), employer contributions to benefits (esp. pensions), and running out of shelf space. Between 2006-07 and 2017, there's a projected drop of $52 million in the total UC library budget. The reduction in the acquisitions budget for all the UCs (21%) is bigger than the total materials budget for UCD and UCI combined. A 21% cut in the operations budget (in terms of FTE is nearly as large as the total staff of the UDSB and UCD libraries.

Cost-saving strategies include:

Shared library services (already resulting in current annual savings of $114 million per year). Not just shared digital initiatives like NGM, but shared services to conserve space: avoiding unnecessary duplication of new print materials, removing unnecessary duplicate copies in existing print collections, trying to acquire e-journals and e-books wherever possible. Removing unnecessary duplicate copies of print backfiles of journals reliably available in digital form will add as much as 13 years to capacity of existing campus and regional facility stacks, but costs money (in the millions of dollars) to implement. However, this is considered relatively inexpensive. Identifying and removing unnecessary duplicate copies of books is less effective, takes more time, probably not as high priority as removal of serial backfiles.

Shared licensing of digital collections - already saves us $55 million a year. More than 25 candidate projects are described and prioritized in the NGTS initiative.

Possible future developments: systemwide approval plan, systemwide shelf-ready processing, expansions of shared cataloging, avoiding duplication of foreign-language materials. Graph of how the system might save $52 million through 2014, in three phases.

How does this fit into the UC "Working Smarter" initiative? This is the library's contribution to Working Smarter [maybe not the only contribution, I'm not clear on this].

Issues for continuing discussion: financing (funding sources? Loan financing?) and governance. Existing systemwide bodies may need to have their roles defined or redefined, including the Council of ULs, SLASIAC, Shared Library Facilities Board, LAUC, Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication. New governance structures may need to be created, if required.

Summary:Libraries will be out of shelf space in 5-7 years, likely operating budget reductions of up to 21% ($52 million).

The solution: shared services to help conserve space, achieve efficiencies, continuing and accelerating the libraries' Next Generation initiatives. During 2011, consultation continues, the Council of ULs will oversee detailed planning and analysis. Continued discussion is encouraged about financing and governance.

Brian Schottlaender, UL of UCSD, was supposed to be the main speaker for this presentation but was unable to attend. Miller gave the presentation instead.

Talking about report: The University of California Library Collection: Content for the 21st Century and Beyond. NextGen Melvyl is "not trivial, but is a huge strategic platform that we need to move ahead."And so is NGTS (NextGen Technical Services). "We're through talking about this. We're not interested in anybody's opinion about the reports any more. We areimplementing." (General manner from outset is that of a school principal addressing a group of recalcitrant students.) "These groups have been discharged, the reports are final. The recommended changes are being implemented."

SOPAG is charged with implementing the recommendations issued by the NGTS report. Cost savings and cost avoidance are strategic, but they don't completely solve the budget problems. Current focus is on implementation and action. Want to have some quick wins early. Continuous vetting must happen throughout this process. Always thinking in terms of systemwide benefit; want to continuously assess, revise and adjust the implementation.

Rough draft of where we are right now with implementation of NGTS recommendations: Within SOPAG, an NGTS Management Team will be created -- 5-6 members, membership will include 2-3 SOPAG mmebers, the past chair of the NGTS steering committee, a project manager, and a communications manager. Will provide overall steering for the implementation of NGTS. Then there will also be Power-of-Three groups, responsible for implementation of high-priority NGTS recommendations. For example, POT#2 will be responsible for recommendations E5 and E6, and will be made up of HOPS. There will also be "lightning bolt" teams, which are given very specific tasks.

Nick Robinson (UCB) has a question regarding systemwide governance - how can LAUC best position itself to perform an advisory role in whatever new governance structure evolves? Micki Gorell [sorry if I got the name wrong] from UCLA asks a question about NGM - states that NGM is not an adequate substitute for the OPACs that we currently have, and feels that the Council of ULs are not listening to librarian concerns on this issue. Miller says that she is wrong, and what she is stating is a manner of opinion. He says to look at the big picture, and that he wants to talk about the development process. "Pay close attention here...we are not saying that NGM is a pilot any longer. It's the real deal, let's hang onto it, let's build our other infrastructure around it." States that we have to get past the approach that we can't go ahead with something until it's perfect. General murmurs around the room agreeing with the example, mentioned by Micki, that known-item searching in NGM is very difficult. Condescension from Miller, accusing us of not having read the reports, and asking us if we remember the footnotes in the reports.

Another questioner asks how we can feel that we are being listened to, mentions complaints from faculty and students about problems with NextGen Melvyl. "When they complain, and we don't try to fix the problem, I think it's not to our credit." Miller answers that they did studies with end-users, they collected data from end-users, and that data is posted on the website. He says her complaints are anecdotal evidence, but "isn't it amazing that we have tens of thousands of satisfied users?"

Message to deliver about the budget situation. It is real, serious, and this is a time of transforming, radical changes, and it is not optional.

Priorities for Collective Initiatives- for all of the UC libraries. Why are we doing this & what are the forces driving us to put these priorities together?

"The Forces"

The Budget

also faced with neverending price increases on collections. something has to change.

overwhelmed by newly created digital services & confounded by new digitization of content (such as research data). Resources such as Merritt can add up to be very expensive (it costs about 1,000/yr/TB...what about a researcher with a PB of data?).

We need to evolve w/ the new undergrad generation & their knowledge/skill set. If we don't, they will go elsewhere

We are out of physical space for the collections

What can we do to try to take leadership & make some strategic moves to solve these forces to ultimately support scholarly enterprise?

Report- The UC Library Collection- Content for the Future & Beyond. We are going to follow this. This is where our priorities are. Note that this says Library- not Libraries.

Next Gen Melvyl. This is not trivial, it is a huge strategic platform for us to move ahead. It opens us to doing new ways of business.

Next Gen Tech. Services. Where are with with this? Wants us to understand where this process is. The ULs have explicitly said, of the recommendations that came to them, which sets are of: high priority, medium priority, items that are not going to be seen through. No longer interested in people's opinions on the reports. They are now in implementation phase.

the formal discharge was Jan 24. Prior to that, in mid-December, sent out the final report as widely as possible. Nobody picked up in this report that it says, "This is what we are doing". SOPAG is responsible for following through.

SOPAG is charged to implement NGTS as specified by the Council of ULs. They are working on the structure for doing this.

Observations from SOPAG. "The Rough Draft":

transformation is an evolving process. Cost savings & cost-avoidance are strategic, but they don't completely solve the budget problems.

current focus is on Implementation & Action- not on more studying of the processes.

want some "quick wins early"- some things in the process will take a long time, some will be implemented immediately

continuous vetting must happen throughout these processes- at all levels. must keep everyone informed. Not looking for input from people, but want people to think "can I contribute something Useful that might help make this move along?"

leverage the existing members of the all-campus groups. Always thinking in a systemwide benefit.

Continuously assess, revise, & adjust this implementation framework.

As SOPAG members are appointment, great attention is paid to the expertise brought to the group. Want a varied representation of expertise. Not accidental who is appointed to SOPAG

Power of Three Groups- responsible for implementing specific groups of the high & medium priority recommendations. At least 1 sopag member to serve as a "sponsor" and 2 other members from one of the All campus Groups.

-charged w/ Make it Happen, deal w/ project mgmt, and take care of Communication

- As part of this on-going vetting process, does this include openness at this point to suggestions related to receiving documents generated from programs held at individual campuses discussing this topic?

Answer: Speaking for himself (Bruce Miller), thanks, but not particularly interested in this. Why? Because we have already made decisions & are moving forward. Professionally speaking, yes, we'll take a look at it.

- How & when will we have a chance to assist w/ implementation?

Answer: We are going to do these things, regardless. As for implementation, SOPAG is in charge & will assign the groups. Those groups will be in charge of moving forward & communication- which may help with people feeling left out or confused. This is a change in how we have historically done things & he wants people to understand that.

2. As a LAUC member, how can LAUC best position itself to continue to perform its advisory role in relation to whatever new governance structure is established?

Answer: The SLASIAC outcomes explicitly said that the final report will be given to Council of ULs. Are we going to evolve as we continue working? Things should naturally arise that will make clear the changes that need to be established

- Please talk about Shared monographs & Shared print in place groups.

Answer: All of these activities & other are factors taken into account. In response to budget & space limitations, not going to buy 10 copies of the same book. Different libraries will buy different books & will share them with each other. Shifting more towards the UC Library collective.

- Next Gen Melvyl- not an adequate substitute for the current OPACs we have. Not sure if this feedback has arrived at the level of the ULs. This is a very serious issue & needs to be usable for the library patrons. There have been options that have been ignored.

Answer: Where are we going to get the money? Trying to look at the big picture & what will work for the long term. We need to get out of the "we don't move ahead unless it's perfect" mindset. When looking at big picture, the budget, of trying to be in a leadership role, we need to go with NGM. The UC systemwide is moving forward.

- Comments made over & over by members- the SLASIAC reports are broad statements w/o references to reports or studies. We want to follow up on these statements. Would like the ULs to "step up to the bibliographic citation plate".

Answer: There are heavily embedded footnotes & links. Go to the NGTS website & read the documents. The data is all there. SLASIAC is a work in progress.

Bruce Miller: There is a LAUC rep on every all-campus group. Also every librarian on the groups, they are all LAUC members. Carry your responsibility w/ you and speak up.

- Can we truly have faith that we are being listened to? From the beginning with the pilot public service librarians started noticing problems, which is to be expected. Have complaints from faculty & students trying to use the system. Shortly after NGM started, it was the default catalog. Faculty would complain to the librarians & the reference desk. All complaints were passed on to the appropriate body & it feels as if we were not listened to.

Answer: We are seeking input. The complaints to go up the chain & get worked on. We have data that show problems for our users. We did real studies w/ end users & received overwhelmingly positive responses.

- Suggested the UL's may not be the most appropriate group to submit this resolution to- perhaps they should just be copied.

- Concerns of the generality of the phrasing of the resolution. It is general, we are not taking the opportunity to take a stand on what should be protected and why. We should identify what should be protected- such as the collections. Should talk about what kinds of librarians we need, to best support the missions of libraries. To be able to best invest the time of libraries and librarians. Should deal more with long-term preservation of the collections. Take this as an opportunity to be more directive & specific about what we believe should be protected.

- Reply: it is more generalized because it is coming from the greater LAUC, but it does address topics such as the collections

- Comment that it is weak. Should be more aggressive in its resolution.

-Suggestion by authoring group member that this resolution goes back w/ group that authored it & revise according to comments taken from today.

Motion put out there by Pauline Manaka and seconded by Elaine McCracken.

Lise Snyder has only the kindest words for Locke and thought highly of him. But she feels this is not appropriate for LAUC. Resolutions put forward by librarians such as Ken Furuta are more appropriate. What about all the other UC Librarians who passed away who also contributed to this field in their own way but are not recognized in this way. Should we have such a resolution for all librarians who pass away who spent some time at a UC Library? There must be another way to recognize treasured colleagues.

Because of the short amount of time we have, Rhonda Lawrence moves to put this to a vote.

Miki says, listening to what Lise had to say, she now has a concern about his sort of thing. This kind of this may become exclusive rather than inclusive based on who is popular or has friends who would put forth such a motion.

Michael's compromise is to adopt these resolutions and find other ways to honor our colleagues in the future.

Pauline Manaka says people make contributions to librarianship, and if their friends don't say anything, no one will know. She believes in the spirit in the innovations Locke and Patty has made to our field. She suggests we adopt the resolutions and then find another way starting next year.

Motion to close the debate by Debbie. Seconded by Nicole. Motion passes.

Discussion: This is too general, too apple pie. We're not giving enough specifics about why we need to protect libraries and librarians. The collections shouldn't be destroyed because they're part of the core mission of universities to educate and provide the tools for a good education.

Discussing offering UC quality education online. Pilot will offer classes to undergraduates. They received 80. Faculty selection panel selected 30; they met for 2 days at the Berkeley marina. The 30 faculty, their classes and some information has been posted. Check them out at http://bit.ly/dP9XeZ.

We should have some courses up and running this Fall quarter.

Lise Snyder from UCLA wants to know about library involvement in this program. How are libraries integrated into this program?

Over the next few months, working with the instructional designers, that's the time they'll be talking about which materials will be integrated into their courses. We have a range of experience among the faculty with regard to this so it's up to the instructional designers to direct the faculty along this road. Hopefully, they will be engaging with the librarians on their campus to learn more as well. He also wants the instructional designers get in touch with the libraries on the campuses of the faculty.

Is there a way for librarians to be proactive in this involvement and find out the names of the faculty so we know who to contact?

Yes. All the names and contact info are posted.

Another interesting discussion has been about the income earned by this program. All the income earned on each campus will stay with the campus. Dan is working on make this program very transparent, sharing line item budgets with the administration of all the campuses.

Mitchell Brown of UCI would like a more explanation of the assessment of this program.

John Young (Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and the Director of Research at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in educational measurement from Stanford University in 1989) will be evaluating the pilot programs. He will look at the program as a whole. There's also going ot be a top down assessment, how well the students do, costs of the workload effectiveness of the teachers. Bottom up will be more descipline specific. How well did the learning acitives achieve the learning objective set up by the instructor? Are certain approaches better in certain types of disciplines than in others? There may be experiments by offering 2 courses, one with asynchronous and one with synchronous teaching to assess effectiveness of the teaching method.

How will students be selected for these courses?

Students will sign up in the normal way. Cross campus instruction is challenging but there are a few that are that are being designed for this. It's permitted under senate regulation. But there are challenges - having to do with advertising, getting the courses listed, and the students having to transfer the credits. So this won't be a huge part except perhaps during summer sessions.

1. Can we deliver a UC undergrad quality education online? This is framed as a pilot to assess critical issues that have to do w/ online instruction. Aim is 2.5 year program, to build courses & teach to undergrads. Request to faculty for participation to submit proposals for courses- received 80. 30 were selected by selection panel. Team of 30 faculty that were selected met for 2 days in Berkeley, talking about all issues that have to do w/ the pilot of online instruction. Have Tech. Learning Design team, Evaluation Team. Moving forward into a detailed design phase. Next steps to work w/ faculty in a sense that works w/ them to develop proposals for their courses. Plan is to hand these proposals to a production team. Hope to have courses up & running as early as Fall Term. Do not yet have funding. Have enough now to get through May, optimistic they will receive more funding to get beyond May.

- Questions:

- Lisa (UCLA)- LAUC documents about library involvement in this process- where does this document stand?

- Greenstein (DG): Over the next few months, faculty will begin working w/ instructional designers to map out their courses, this is when they will start to look perhaps at library involvement. Some have a few fixed idea of what they want to do, others don't. Wide range of experience & ability represented. As faculty work with instructional designers & think about activities they want to include, DG hopes they will include libraries in this process.

- DG replied he hopes they will be looking at how best to incorporate this.

-Are these projects going to be publicly posted so LAUC can be proactive in contacting faculty- for direct follow up?

- Yes, they will be accessible on the website.

2. - DG: Different funding model adopted. Before, Indirect Cost Recovery & Grants came to UCOP and was redistributed to campuses. Now, all funds generated by campuses will stay at the campuses. Will be moving to implement this soon. By 2012-2013, hoping systems will be in place to move to this model. At individual campuses, the libraries need to be much more proactive that we communicate to administration the role of the library so that we can have an opportunity to receive some of this funding. Increasingly, this will become a very local topic, specific to the funding model at each campus.

Question- how will the assessment of the online instruction programs work? This is being managed by Director of Multi-Campus Research (at UCSB). Two Main Assessment components: 1. look at program as a whole, the extent to which it is successful in achieving its goals. 2. comparable questions will be asked about each course- how well the students do, what are the costs, workload, etc. to be able to do a comparable analysis of the courses.

- Also will have a "bottom up" analysis. How well did the learning activities that were selected achieve the learning objectives that the instructtor developed for the course? Controlled experiments- e.g. if course is offered twice, one synchronous instruction & one asynchronous- which model was more effective?

Question- how will students be selected for the pilot program courses? Aim is that these courses will become part of the curriculum. Cross-campus instruction is challenging. Small number of these courses are designed for this model. Challenges: advertising, getting course listed, etc. DG hoping pilot will enable lowering of barriers that exist around cross campus instruction.

- Observations on Data Reports produced for LAUC: 1. Looking at April 2010 payroll snapshot & 2. October 2010 payroll snapshot. Looked at librarians by campus, gender, ethnicity. A few observations: between April & October 2010- total headcount 470 (april), 459 (october). All ranks showed decreases. Most decreases at Step 5. All campuses but UCM showed decreased in total headcount. Decreased in librarians at Step 6 from 24 to 21. Increase from 8 to 22 at Step 7. In terms of ethnicity, ethnic minorities has decreased at all categories at Assoc. rank.

- Jesse Bernall, Diversity UCOP Coordinator assigned, in response to recent racist & homophobic incidents on some UC campuses. He was a UC student Regent. He works at the Provost's office. New position- has been there about 7 months. Addition to diversity efforts: looking beyond structural diversity to the environments that UC people experience on a daily basis. Ad Hoc committee formed to examine campus diversity climate. Each campus has 1 rep to President's council. 6 experts from outside of UC to join, including someone from NAACP & Anti-Defamation League.

-5 Working Groups of President's Council- including faculty diversity initiative; defining best practices for recruitment & retention. A Safety & Engagement working group for best practices w/in UC. A group to Identify Metrics in this area, which is not easy, but there are some national models available that are currently being explored. A Working group looking specifically at LGBT issues.

- Mitchell Brown's presentation for Research & Prof Dev. committee: reviewed 20 applications. Granted 2 research grants, 2 mini, 14 presentation grants. Recipients were posted on current LAUC website & current grants committee looking at 19 submissions. Reviewing & contacting members for 6 research & 13 presentation grants. Remainder balance is left, a 2nd call for submissions will be going out. Larger number of research grants this year. Encourages members & divisions to apply for grants for attending conferences and prof. dev. meetings. Larger report will be posted on LAUC website.

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This blog is a collection of posts by LAUC members about topics relating to LAUC, including assemblies and systemwide discussion. This blog does not necessarily represent the views of LAUC or any of its members.